Laying the groundwork to earn a respectable wage in any service business can be a cat-and-mouse game. I’d like to share a few tactics I’ve picked up over the years that have helped us root out the answer to the queen mother of all biz dev questions: “What’s your budget?”

They laughed when I sat down at the HTML editor. But they cried when I began to make web pages. That was 1995. This is 2010, and we’re still doing it. Web design is no longer an occult activity for a small circle of initiates, and we’ve gotten a bit better at it over the years. The technology has changed (you’re welcome!) but the basics are still good design, great content, and an interface that makes reading or shopping or sharing a pleasure.